Assembly Hall

Objective:

Give small ships (roaming gangs of approx 15 cruisers/BCs) objectives in 00 sov space.

Why this is needed:

Currently there is a void in opportunities for small ships to have an impact in 00. Destroying POS's aren't really an option for these types of fleets, nor is participating in territorial claiming as a large assault with greater numbers and bigger ships is required.

We've all been there...spend 20 minutes getting a roaming gang together, then 20 minutes jumping to the destination, only to find that your opponent turttled up in a pos or station and refuses to fight. Your only options are to stay there and camp (boring, no gameplay value) or travel to another destination and hope you find someone to gank who isn't paying attention to intel channels. There needs to be more than this.


Proposal:

1) Make I-Hub upgrades attackable like station services are.
2) Balance the hit points on the upgrades so a 15 man cruiser sized roaming gang can offline an upgrade in 20 minutes.
3) In order to restore the upgrade to online status, the owning corp must pay a fee. (25? mil isk)

Reasons for doing this:
1) Gives small ships a target to assault without requiring a full out war or blob warfare.
2) Adds an economic warfare element that is currently missing in 00.
.....a) You know you've inflicted 25? mil isk damages to your enemy per incapped upgrade. (Tangible)
.....b) You know that you've denied access to greater income potential until upgrades are returned to service (Intangible)
3) It uses assets already in game, so the dev team doesn't have to devote an entire expansion to make it happen.

Additional bonuses:

1) When coupled with kill mails that show reinforced structures (that the devs stated they would be adding to the game)...I can now contract mercenaries to hit someone on the other side of the map, and have a quantifiable result outside of ships destroyed. (I'll pay you X amount per upgrade you offline). Mercenaries rejoice.
2) Tactical choices: No blob needed. Alliances can send out 3 different small roaming fleets to 3 different systems within enemy territory, and cause chaos. Imagine the intel channels and the confusion in trying to get a defense fleet together under those circumstances. Plus, even if one group is blobbed by the defenders, the other 2 fleets are still causing damage.
3) New Isk sink added to the game. That's a good thing for the economy.

If 15 BCs can kill iHub upgrade in 20 minutes a 250 man BS fleet can alpha the upgrades.

Whilst the idea is commendable it wont happen like that. The blob will move in and destroy all upgrades in 5 minutes, tehn move onto teh next iHub.

Greetings

Not sure what the end mechanics would look like, but I am all in favor of a simple solution to get more PVP going. Baring the Blob mechanic it would definitely serve to leave a calling card as you passed through other people's space.

vr
East

Ships also generally aren't static structures which just sit around 23.5/7 waiting for someone to shoot them, either.

Which means that small entities'll be more heavily penanized economically than the big guys, which won't give a flying ****.


Hint: POCOs.


Again, POCOs.


Sigh, this again. Stop this, this isn't the big moneymaker you think it is.


Time hurts more equally than isk. Balancing anything on isk doesn't work, never has, never will.

As for "an alt can just rep it while they run the belts", well, guess they're going to be that much easier to gank then.

While I VERY MUCH want to see small gang warfare targets, I don't think your suggestion fits the bill:

1.) Station services have enormous amounts of EHP. They are not small gang targets.

2.) I don't think current IHUB mechanics mesh well with your goal:
-- If you can repair an upgrade for isk, the damage you inflict will be easily negated by a quick payment... 25m is nothing to a large corp.. hell, its nothing to many ratters...

-- Upgrades only go online at the next DT, and upgrades typically go offline immediately. If you allow a small-sized gang to be able to shut off upgrades, you create a very annoying TZ warfare situation...

-- IMO, there is too little risk for the marauders, given the economic impact they can inflict. It's easy to avoid a counter assault, and they risk very little while shooting the IHUB.

In short, I like your goal, I just don't think this is a viable implementation (in its current form).


Another note:
I had a corp mate that propsed a fairly neat idea very much in line with this:

Player Created Incurions

This does not create sansha incursion sites!

The main idea:

It's a deployable device that causes system-wide incursion effects to screw over general PvE.
-- Reduced resistances on all ships...
-- Reduced bounties on all NPC rats...
and a few other ideas were suggeted to affect ore mining, ice mining, PI, Moongoo, etc; but the above two are the main goal.

The concept....

A marauding group comes into local, anchors the device creating a system wide warpable beacon, They then online it. If the enemies don't destroy the low-ehp beacon within 15 minutes (or whatver), the system gains the above incursion effects for the next several hours... (My favorite alteration of it, was that the effects would last a few days, but the severity of the effects would wax around the deployment period and wane for the rest of the day)

Then, the marauders can unanchor the device, move to another system, and redeploy it. The goal, is to force the locals to form up and fight off the marauders before their precious ratting system becomes much less effective!!! It's low ehp (think a few 10's of thousands, NOT miilions), and the fact the marauders are putting the device at risk, essentially give them something to lose. And the 15 minutes to online period force the locals to act quickly (limiting blob potential).